| Of late I heard about the 'knowledge' being
spread by people 'committed' to anti sahaja yoga. And it came to me
as a surprise - can we be anti-spirit and anti-soul? Can we be anti-something
which recognizes Jesus, Prophet Mohammed and Lord Krishna all as a
manifestation of divine will. Nevertheless I ventured on one of their
website and after going through it realized that my friends could
not mention for even once that Shri Mataji was not divine or her message
was untrue. I would possibly join forces with my anti sahaja yogi
friends once they convince me that spreading the message of universal
love & compassion and exhorting people to purify their character
and be fearless humans is a misleading message. Thus I would attempt
to define my experiences as a Sahaja Yogi - the final decision would
of course be of the discerning spirit and one who believes in the
divine power.
In one word I could attempt to describe my
experiences as a sahaja yogi, it would be - peace. Peace not just
as a state of mind , but of spirit, of soul and of my surroundings.
The calmness which flows out of this omnipresence of peace clears
all the cobwebs of mind and shows the path for realizing the complete
potential of human existence with the clarity of a crystal. I would
offer one more word to complete the picture - strength. Day in and
day out this strength has given me the courage to stand up to negative
forces which had been a rarity earlier. As these forces manifest
themselves in form of events and people - there is a continuous
discovery that the fear to get involved with them is not because
these people and event are too powerful and overwhelming but that
there still lies somewhere a whiff of nervousness. It is a humbling
experience too, but the grace of Shri Mataji is infinite and one
that eradicates the fringe existence of nervousness. The strength
is drawn from character - A character that stands like a mountain,
in its sublime purity, beauty and toughness. The realization that
character and spiritual ascent are interrelated is the primary force
that cemented my ties with Sahaja.
Before I attempt to elaborate all that sahaja
has offered me and all that I have accepted , there needs to be
present a foundation on which I received my realization. It was
not dramatic or a one off event that was the turning point. Rather
it has been a journey through several turning points , the road
often uphill for a while but most of the journey has been an easy
downhill. I have had a fair share of doubts and confusions, trials
and tribulations and all of them have purified me like the fire
purifies gold. I had been somewhat spiritual and philosophical since
I attained maturity. All through my school years there was a suppressed
need to discover myself , my world and the urge to answer why people
behave the way they did. That urge got vent in my writings and in
my discussions. The concept of divine power being worshipped in
many forms was intuitively not very appealing as did the many rituals
that accompanied such prayers. But the whole experience of prayer
was very soothing and took me to a new realm of existence, though
for a very short span. In due course my material life progressed
and I found myself facing a new environment at my college. During
that time I got hold of a summary on Gita. Even before I had interest
in such readings there was a realization that such great compilations
of wisdom and truth cannot be interpreted completely. Thus there
was a very cautious optimism whenever I got hold of such a treatise.
So, even though I very guarded while reading the book yet that summary
gave me a completely new perspective on my life. The philosophy
of Karmayoga appealed to me a lot. I re-read that summary twice
and now that I had already filtered the truth and the poetry, the
realization came to me that Gita would be guiding light for me -
as the statement of Lord Krishna. During those four years at engineering
my faith in a universal divine power reached a culmination. There
was and is no doubt in my mind that such a divine power controls
and guides the universe. And that we, as humans are manifestations
of that divine power - a reflection of the supreme personality albeit
in a cloudy mirror. I must confess here that I never read and understood
the whole Bhagwad Gita completely. For me it has been an on going
process. It's an effort of a lifetime for many people to understand
it and even then they get deviated from its prime objective. But
after Sahaja even Gita has become simpler to understand. Concepts
that required days of pondering and occasional discussion now get
cleared in moments - and in a very elegant and simple manner, they
fit into the order of all spiritual knowledge.
Some times I believe that my introduction
to and subsequent adoption of Sahaja Yoga is a divine gift. It has
been the end of all journeys and quests to achieve more satisfaction
and peace. It has been a grant by the divine power in response to
my fervent prayers for finding my true existence. I was philanthropic
in my actions during college when compassion started growing as
a result of the realization that helping a human for a noble cause
is the only prayer, but sometimes I lacked moral will to take these
actions. Sahaja has given me the required strength of character
to face all adversity while helping people. During my college I
happened to read a book on Kundalini - a real life account of a
yogi who awakened his Kundalini through rigorous mediation. That
book opened a new aspect of my existence - a discovery of a power
that resided within us and was omnipotent. If this was true then
my quest had gone in complete vain, when all that I had required
was a search within and the answer was buried inside me. I read
some more about the concept of Kundalini and slowly became convinced
about the qualities and manifestations of this supreme energy -
a trigger put there by the supreme soul by which we humans could
clear all the dust on our mirror and see our full glory : The reflection
of God.
I vowed that the quest for knowledge to unlock
the mystical energies of this force would become the final one for
me.
As this spiritual evolution was taking place,
I passed out of engineering and found myself at a B-school. The
cultural upheaval of my personality was a hair-raising experience.
The effect of the cutthroat competition and the never ending race
to prove your worth sucked me into a cycle of indulgence. Many changes
came to my personality under the effect of an rigorous existence.
But maybe I was not left alone. There was something working besides
my materials actions that despite neglect and abuse to my character
still kept the quest alive and at the right moment I was offered
the chance that would completely change my life - indeed it was
re-birth
The instrument of this divine gift was a
friend @ MDI. Indeed I came to know that he had a great deal of
knowledge about Kundalini and he suggested me the path of meditation
for awakening the Kundalini. He told me about Shri Mataji and Sahaja
Yoga, and eventually I took my realization. To be truthful I felt
nothing extraordinary even after my realization apart from a sense
of peace which lasted for a few hours. I also brought the picture
of Shri Mataji back with me. For years I could not accept any living
person as a guru - a person who could guide me to ultimate spiritual
realization, under the impression that no human is perfect enough
to infallibly lead me on this path. And thus I decided that only
a divine soul would guide me on the path of spiritual existence.
So even though I regarded Shri Mataji highly because of her gift
to me, yet I could not bring myself to offer Shri Mataji my devotion,
materially or spiritually. Little did I know about my short-sightedness
in realizing Shri Mataji's complete spiritual opulence. Gradually
events, people ,all of whom I saw as obstacles of my ambition, started
transforming themselves into instruments of achieving spiritual
enlightenment. All that I desired materially - Money, power, influence
started coming my way. Earlier I fretted and fought to gather all
of these but now they were being offered to me at my doorstep. The
flow of my existence became so streamlined when my state of meditation
was good that it was clearly amazing. Coincidences, luck and all
possible explanation floated in my mind but all of them being of
too fickle nature to sustain the power living that was slowly becoming
a characteristic of my existence. Clearly there was some other force
at work. And I discovered that force in a very ironical manner.
Achieving all my material desires slowly
inflated my ego. I gradually started falling in love with all that
had been materially bestowed in so short a span of few months. And
surely enough I gradually started missing my meditation. And suddenly
things started getting complex. There appeared sharp edges in an
earlier streamlined existence. But I was fortunate. I had seen many
of my batch-mates who had taken self-realization but could not draw
the full benefits of the vast spiritual reservoir because of getting
involved in securing their lives and asserting their ego. I was
indeed very fortunate that Shri Mataji had chosen me to continue
as a Sahaja Yogi and always kept beside me a mentor and a guard
of my spiritual existence in form of a friend. Even now I do not
assert that I am pure enough to see through the wordly temptations-
but I am strong enough to follow the path of purity, the strength
being drawn from the sense of security that Shri Mataji is always
there to bring me back on the path. So when I started fully meditating
as I ha done in past, things started to improve, and such is the
magnanimity of Shri Mataji that though the decline from a state
of purity was along a very gradual slope but the ascent to my previous
state was very swift. And now there was no confusion as to what
path to take to achieve peace and moral strength and move towards
ultimate fusion of the soul with the supreme spirit. The infatuations
and the attractions came again but now I can see through to, for
most of them.
If there is any single chain that stops our
spiritual ascent, then it is ego. It destroys our purity. It is
the final frontier to be conquered. We all go forth in our lives
with the fanatical belief in our might and intelligence. How many
times have we been defeated in trying to modify our surroundings?
How many times the quest for worldly pleasures has brought the erosion
of our morality? And how many times does that worldly possession
given us eternal satisfaction and happiness? But still we chose
to neglect the frailty of our existence and personality. I was a
complete believer in "Control your destiny or somebody else will-
Jack Welch". But after seeing why people who although seem very
much materially endowed search in vain for satisfaction in spiritual
places, I realized that yes we need to control our destiny - but
only one decision is needed, a single page of reasoning and not
the whole book. We need to surrender our ego and nurture the compassion
and universal love which would make us all powerful - the power
of a strong character. But we are very vain, even after seeing ages
of humans leaving behind their material wealth for spiritual quest
we still believe we can do this on our own - we can strike the right
balance between spiritual and material existence. I was no different
and got my share my search and pain. But there is no pain in path
of true spiritual existence and no search too once we have reached
it. Maybe I was fortunate enough but I would truly pray to Shri
Mataji to spread this realization to all human beings and wish that
this good fortune spreads around.
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